LL-L 'Language varieties' 2007.01.26 (06) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 26 January 2007 - Volume 06

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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L 'Lexicon' 2007.01.26 (01) [E/LS]

Re: body language Ole Stig Anderson says:" Cats' and dogs' tails are
parallel to human body language, whereas sign languages are a fully-fledged
languages with words, grammar and all, which you can hardly say of body
language, be it pets' or humans'."
But is that not just the argument that Ron was making? Whether it is a
spoken language or a sign language, they both come at us from a misty past
whether from grunt or ear twitch. Look what came of both the grunt and the
twitch! Jacqueline

----------

From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L 'Language varieties' 2007.01.26 (03) [E/LS]

Dear Jonny Ron & All:

Subject: LL-L 'Phonology' 2007.01.25 (03) [E]

I don't know if it's relevant here, but we know that the regular & long
austerities of silence in some of the Brotherly Orders were often
circumvented in cloister by sign language. It came to a point that the monks
could discuss the most abstruse points of doctrine or canon law thoroughly &
in feverish silence, the fevered silence of a dining-table full of men so
vigouously gesturing they looked like men in the throws of spider-bite.

> Hmm- I thought about modern, organized sign languages and really assumed
them to be very young. Of course- I'm aware that there are very archaic and
international signs between people with communicational problems all over
the world.
But- how old are the first mentioned ones, in their highly developed form? I
really don't know but put them to the, let's say, last onehundred years...!?

Also, though I know this doesn't fall into the category of SIGN language,
the Goidelic peoples could spell in silence & at speed with their Ogham
alphabet, across their noses, shins or staffs. Lovers & cup-mates could also
spell across the fingers.

& then 'Hunters Sign' in Bushman communities must go back to the Dawn of Man
- we were hunters first. I know of a Bushman kid who caught measles in his
infancy & became deaf. He never learned to speak, but the whole clan talked
to him & he talked back in Hunter's Sign. He wanted for nothing in reason.
Sign isn't limited to where to find it & who is to kill it. I believe that
sign language started not with the deaf but with men on a hunt, or women
hunter-gatherers, who didn't want to draw unnecessary attention to
themselves from the buck, or perhaps a pride of lions. We were not always
perched on the very top of the food chain...

Yrs,
Mark

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L 'Language varieties' 2007.01.26 (03) [E/LS]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language varieties
>
> Moin, Jonny!
>
> I believe that among us the issue of sign languages would be most
> competently addressed by our Sandy, and he usually swings into action
> on weekends, thus anytime now.

I'm amazed that you noticed that! Yes, I'm out most nights.

Firstly, Jonny's idea that sign languages have more onomatopoeia because
they're younger. The answer is no. It's as I originally said, most human
discourse is about visual reality, therefore signs more often mimic
reality than spoken words. In British Sign Language, for example, you
sign a dog by showing its paws and tongue, a cat by its whiskers, a lion
by its mane and so on. These are all visual onomatopoeia, although I see
Jonny's point that in future these might become more abstract.

The system of classifiers in sign languages bring onomatopoeia into the
domain of grammar, however, and as the language develops you wouldn't
expect these kinds of onomatopoeia to disappear, even though they might
change. For example, a car is shown as a flat hand held horizontally and
this is moved around somewhat like a real car (although really there is
a lot of stylistics in the way the movement is done, perhaps equivalent
to accent in spoken languages), a person is shown as a finger held up
(or indeed, three people as three fingers held up!) and these are made
to execute whatever motions the person might be going through, and again
a running animal might be shown as a finger held horizontally and so on.
These are inseparable from the grammar of the language and while they
might change, you would expect them to be replaced by more of the same.

As for the ages of sign languages, well, judging by the some of the
responses so far, I suppose you may be surprised to hear that there are
fully-fledged, indeed highly-developed sign languages that are only
about 30 years old! For example, Nicaraguan Sign Language and a certain
Bedouin sign language are both being studied by researchers in order to
understand how languages come into being spontaneously. Neither of these
were invented - they just developed spontaneously over the course of a
few generations in societies where deaf people were originally isolated
due to the customs of the country (in the case of Nicaraguan Sign
Language) or for geographical reasons (in the case of the Bedouin sign
language).

How old the more established sign languages are is difficult to know
because until recently sign languages were never written down and we
have to rely to a greater extent on anecdotal evidence or the occasional
drawings or etchings. You can also look at the geographical
distributions of sign languages and their elements, however. For
example, New Zealand and Australian sign languages are both closely
related to British Sign Language, while schools in which French and
American sign languages were used are well documented and go back
centuries. Martha's Vineyard Sign Language was also descended from a
dialect of British Sign Language (Old Kentish Sign Language), and the
British politician George Downing (after whom Downing Street was named)
came from the same area where Old Kentish Sign Language was spoken and
is thought to have maintained a network of Deaf spies for their sign
language abilities. Samuel Pepys described the interaction between
Downing and Deaf people in his diary, making it quite clear that Deaf
people then had a completely-developed language and the association with
George Downing and the Kentish Weald takes the roots of British Sign
Language back to at least the middle of the 17th century, but there's no
reason to believe that it originates then rather than being part of a
much older tradition.

Old drawings of the British Two-Handed alphabet now used for expressing
English in British Sign Language show that the letters Q and Z are
completely different from the ones we use now, while the rest are much
the same. Funnily enough the signs now used for "question" and "lazy"
are identical to these old fingerspelling letters, suggesting that
modern BSL is a descendant of the sign language used by those who used
the old fingerspelling alphabet.

The unusual two-handed fingerspelling system used in British Sign
Language is derived from a system invented by the Aberdonian, George
Dalgranoch. Statistical analysis suggests, though not particularly
forcefully, that Dalgranoch derived some of the principles used in his
"glove" from the Ogham script that he saw on the standing stones in his
area. Ogham script itself seems to be a reconfiguration of the Roman
alphabet to express it in terms of fingerings, which were used by the
Druids both as a memory aid when reciting poetry, and for divination. St
Patrick forbade this technique for divination but allowed it as a memory
aid.

The use of fingerings in this way has raised speculation that the high
priests amongst the Druids themselves were often deaf, and indeed one
Druid priestess is described as having triple irises, which is a symptom
of a genetic feature which is also associated with congenital deafness.

Finally there is the modern theory that sign languages came before
spoken languages, and that the sounds of modern languages originated as
the sounds made by the different shapes of mouth that the Deaf still use
when signing many signs. For example, in British Sign Language, "vee" is
used when signing "excellent", "lum" is used when signing "disappeared"
and so on.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Interesting responses, I must say.

Jacqueline:

> But is that not just the argument that Ron was making? Whether it is a
spoken language or a sign language, they both come at us from a misty past
whether from grunt or ear twitch. Look what came of both the grunt and the
twitch!

Well, yes and no.  Actually, I agree with both of you, with you to a degree.

I don't believe that a dog's tail wagging qualifies as language, because I
believe it's an automatic expression of emotions, much like humans laughing,
smiling, weeping, ducking, blushing, knitting one's brows, etc.  However,
there may be some ancient link between that and actual language, perhaps
connected by learned social gestures that evolved to symbols, "icons" if you
will, such as shaking hands (originally to show that you don't carry a
weapon), waving (originally for making oneself visible over long distances),
shaking one's head (thought by some to have evolved from refusing
breastfeeding), or the waterfowl's head bobbing I once mentioned
(symbolizing harmlessness when approaching).  Personally I believe that
there's a primeval link between all this and community-specific
condification of linguistic expression, beginning with body language and
signs.

The sign language among hunters Mark and I mentioned arose from the
necessity to be quiet, especially while hunting on foot, which can be a very
risky and dangerous undertaking.  We all still resort to something like that
when we need to community without speech.

I go along with Sandy's basic premise that spoken ("verbal symbolism") began
with onomatopoeia, focusing on both sound and sight.  However, this goes
back very far and is obscured by numerous strata of abstraction and
compounding, not to mention millenia of sound shifts.

Sandy:

> As for the ages of sign languages, well, judging by the some of the
responses so far, I suppose you may be surprised to hear that there are
fully-fledged, indeed highly-developed sign languages that are only
about 30 years old!

But tell me: Were these truly out-of-thin-air inventions or did they draw
from pre-existing sign language varieties?  I rather suspect the latter is
the case.  If so, this would be cases of new code synthecization rather than
of creating sign languages from scratch.

> > I believe that among us the issue of sign languages would be most
> > competently addressed by our Sandy, and he usually swings into action
> > on weekends, thus anytime now.
>
> I'm amazed that you noticed that! Yes, I'm out most nights.

Well, the Kahuna (lowlands-l.net/treasures/kahuna.htm) isn't just a pretty
face, you know.  He enjoys keeping track of people's comings and goings,
especially those he has inducted into the *Hale hanohano* (Hall of Honor)
and those observes as candidates and thus holds to a certain code of
conduct. Without his assistance, running the List would feel even more like
herding cats (sic, Jacqueline), or in the Kahuna's own words like laulele
kauhulu `ole lau ("drag-fishing for schools of surface-dwelling small-fry
without having a net").  (He is awfully good with words, isn't he?)

Me ka mahalo!

Reinhard/Ron

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